Arguments of a Nerdy Couple: The Age Old Question

“No. No way. Not possible.”

“Yes. Yes way. Yes, possible. And completely true.”

“You cannot be serious!”

“Oh yes, I can.”

“Really? You honestly think that?”

“I honestly know that, and you’re mad to think otherwise.”

John stared at the girl sitting opposite with an expression suggesting that he had been struck over the head with a sledgehammer. Rose sat placidly in complete contradiction to his horrified stance, watching him with a mild expression. She popped another forkful of fettucine into her mouth, chewing methodically. John sagged in his chair after a moment, turning his eyes to the ceiling, looking despondent.

“I should have known,” he said mournfully. “It was too good to be true.”

“Oh, come off it,” she scoffed.

“It was all a lie. Everything I ever believed was a lie.”

“You’re such a drama queen.”

“Drama queen, she says! Hah!” He barked out a bitter laugh. “It takes me the better part of a year to ask you out…”

“Because you were being idiotic about a number of stupid reasons, which shouldn’t even be reasons at all.”

“And not once in the midst of all that did you care to tell me this!” He pointed an accusing finger at her.

Rose leaned forward and bit at the air, making him draw his finger back. She settled in her seat, a smirk dancing on her lips. “You’re a right mad hatter, you are,” she declared. “At least you’d be a hatter if you were wearing that Indiana Jones fedora of yours, which I am going to steal from you one day, mind. That aside, you’re completely mad.”

He arched a brow at her. “Number one, you’re not getting that hat. It’s worth its weight in gold and you can’t afford that.”

“Thus explaining the usage of the word ‘steal’.”

“You can’t even steal cookies from the jar without getting caught. You breathe through your mouth when you sneak. And number two, I’m mad? This coming from the girl who prefers Bruce Wayne to Clark Kent?”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “Wayne’s got sharper suits.” 

“Sharper suits?” He straightened and his voice rose to a near squeak. “You’re discriminating based on fashion sense?”

“Sit down, John,” she hissed, her eyes darting around the restaurant. “People are staring.”

“Let them stare! They don’t realize that I’m a Superman worshipper who’s dating a bloody Batman fangirl! And you think that Superman’s useless. How the hell can you possibly call the leader of the Justice League ‘useless’?”

“Duffer in a clown suit,” she said nonchalantly. “Honestly, John, blue and red? He’s like a walking target, practically begging to get caught. At least Batman knows how to hide in the shadows.”

“Superman doesn’t need to hide, that’s for sneaky bastards like the Bat!”

“Stealth is key, love. Batman knows how it works.”

“Cookie jar, Rose,” he reiterated, making her scowl petulantly. “And Batman doesn’t have powers!” He smirked broadly at her with a triumphant look. “Beat that!”

“Batman doesn’t need powers.” She shoved a forkful of pasta into John’s mouth, cutting off his retort. “He’s a normal man who fights crime without having to have fancy-schmancy magical abilities.”

John swallowed the pasta before replying. “Did you seriously just say ‘fancy-schmancy’?”

She shrugged. “You say ‘wibbly-wobbly’.”

“That’s a Doctor Who reference.”

“If the Doctor can get away with ‘wibbly wobbly’ and ‘spacey wacey’, I’m allowed to say ‘fancy schmancy’.”

“Fancy schmancy.” John snorted. “You make him sound like some pixie princess.”

“Don’t pixies like blue?” she asked innocently.

“Treading dangerous grounds here, Rosie Rose,” John warned.

“But honestly, having no powers is a thumbs up. And Batman has a purpose. His parents died right in front of him, showing him the cruelty of the world. He swore his life to fight that.”

“Oh, yes, normal man,” he said dryly. “Trained by ninjas, gear supplied by a quasi-trafficker who nicks technology from the army, bloody huge cave under his manor and behind a waterfall, has a Lamborghini on top of the car, the plane and the bike…”

“A bloody awesome bike.”

“Oh yeah, Rose, normal man. I’m really feeling it.”

“Any normal person can rise up to something like that. Normal people can’t fly or see through solid structures. It’s not relatable at all.”

“And for a reason!” John argued. “If normal blokes had x-ray vision, we’d be stringing up Peeping Toms like sausages! Superman is an honorable gentleman, so he won’t use it for that, and…”

Rose snorted. “Like he hasn’t tried to peek into Lois Lane’s knickers at least once!”

“He’s still a bloke.”

“Thus demolishing your argument.”

“But Lois Lane is his girlfriend!”

“And I’m yours,” replied Rose. “But if I caught you trying to peek at my knickers without my permission, I would beat you with a cricket bat.”

“Rose, if I ended up doing such things when you were not in the mood, I would hand you the bat myself.”

“That’s sweet of you,” she beamed.

“That’s also why I don’t have x-ray vision; so that I don’t have to hand you any cricket bats for peeking at your knickers through your clothes. I fight college professors, not mob bosses and diabolical aliens. Lois Lane is the woman Superman loves, the woman he fights for and I think he’s entitled to glance into her knickers once or twice for all the trouble he goes through. Meanwhile, Brucie Boy parades around Gotham with a different chick on his arm every other hour!”

“It’s an act to protect those whom he loves. Eat your pasta.”

“That is the most terrible excuse I have ever heard. He’s still using women.”

“They know that he’s using them. They’re either twits or they go with it. And he’s a billionaire playboy!” She shrugged. “It’s attractive.”

“So that’s what it is,” John grimaced at her. “It’s because he’s a rich pretty boy. Is that your type, Rosie Rose?”

“Nah, they’re too high maintenance in reality. And your prof calls you ‘pretty boy’.”

“I’m not pretty.” He wrinkled his nose. “I’m manly. You all make me sound like the Easter Bunny.”

“You’re as much of a softy. I just like the fact that Batman has no powers. Superman is just a hop and a skip away from Space Ghost, who has six buttons on those wrist thingies of his that do bloody anything in the universe.”

“Superman is alien. A-li-en!”

“Thus validating my point!”

 “Superman lost his whole planet! You want a personal tragedy, it doesn’t get worse than that!”

Rose sniffed. “Meh.”

“You cried buckets when the Doctor said that Gallifrey was gone!” he argued. “Are you planning to eat that?”

“Nah, you can have it,” said Rose as she handed him the garlic bread off her plate of pasta. “That was a tragedy,” she told him. “The Doctor didn’t just lose his planet; he was forced to destroy his home along with his people thanks to the Time War, forcing him to a life of utter loneliness in the great big universe. Superman here lost his planet when he was a wee baby and far too young to remember.” 

He stared at her, mouth half full of bread. “You are so Scottish!”

“Hello, pot, my name is kettle and we’re both black.”  

“His whole planet, Rose,” he reiterated. “His whole bloody planet! All his people! They were all gone, destroyed!”

“And he found out about it after years of blissful oblivion and the only useful thing he really found out from it was that he’s allergic to a green rock from there.”

“That’s it!” He rose to his feet, skittering his chair behind him, and pointed a finger at her. “This is not going to work, Rose!”

“John, I…”

“We can’t be together when our ideals are so different! Goodbye!” Tossing his napkin onto the table, he stalked away.

Rose sighed lightly, throwing an apologetic smile at the people staring at them. She dropped some money on the table, picked up her bag and moved over to stand expectantly at the door, rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet. A moment later, John ambled towards her, scuffing his converses sheepishly on the ground.

“Yeah…the door…” he mumbled, ruffling his brown hair as her smile widened on her face.

“Uh huh.”

“Wrong way.”

“Yep,” she smiled widely. She took his hands away from his head and patted down the unruly tufts of hair, in spite of their seeming insistence to remain sticking up.

“I can never make a dramatic exit,” he complained.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way,” she sang.

“I never should have signed up for drama club,” he groused.

“You’ve been on stage before.”

“These guys don’t do Shakespeare.”

“More’s the pity,” she chuckled, kissing him playfully on his pout. “You owe me twenty bucks. And I suppose Superman has nice eyes.”

“It’s a start,” he conceded. Throwing a salute to the staring people remaining in the restaurant, they sauntered to the night, holding hands and chortling like loons.